1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to container forming machines, and in particular to a new and improved horizontally oriented method and apparatus for forming containers from a pre-cut fiberboard material blank.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the packaging industry, numerous fiberboard containers and designs have been developed over the years. Such containers are typically constructed of a corrugated material and are used to ship and store a wide variety of products such as fresh fruits and vegetables, canned and bottled goods, meat, and the like. The fiberboard materials may be single face corrugated, single wall (double-faced) corrugated, double wall corrugated, triple wall corrugated, etc. Containers may also be made of other paperboard products including, without limitation, container board, boxboard, linerboard, and cardboard.
In the industry, the terms "case" and "box" are often used interchangeably. These terms each refer to a large, usually rectangular containers made out of fiberboard or paperboard and designed to hold a given number (e.g. 12 or 24) of smaller units such as cartons, bottles, cans, or produce pieces. The term "tray" is used to describe a variety of different containers, but often refers to a container designed to holding a certain weight or volume of product (e.g. 35 pounds of grapes, 60 pounds of beef, etc.).
Existing tray forming machines suffer from many drawbacks. The box forming parts of these machines take in flat paperboard container blanks from the bottom and process them in a vertical fashion. They are capable of receiving a large stack of flat paperboard container blanks, but must first go through the wasteful step of removing the blanks one by one from the top of the stack and re-stacking the blanks in a second stack for removal from the bottom. In addition, if a container blank should be improperly fed into or jam inside such a machine, it is extremely difficult to gain access to the inside of the machine to remove the clogged blank. Often it becomes necessary to cut or tear out the blank in pieces or to partially disassemble the machine in order to remove it.
Many existing machines depend solely upon an extendible and retractable mandrel working in conjunction with angled plows to form the entire container in a single stroke. It can be difficult or impossible for these machines to form paperboard containers with accomplish with multiple walls and/or multiple folds of the same panel. In addition, most current machines are also either incapable of producing very large tray containers, or are unable to produce such large containers in acceptable production volumes. Finally, current machines themselves are unusually large and tall, requiring an unnecessarily large space for the installed machine.